Bernie Sanders: A Candidate Worth Voting For

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"We're in this race to win," said Bernie Sanders: "If you raise the issues that are on the hearts an minds of the American people. If you try to put together a movement which says, 'We have got to stand together as a people and say that this Capitol, this beautiful Capitol, our county belong to all of us and not the billionaire class' —that is not raising an issue, that is winning elections."

The announcement by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a long-time supporter of In These Times, that he will seek the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination is a historic event.

Sanders, a democratic socialist, has no problem brushing off his red-baiting critics. “I think this country,” he wrote in 2009, “could use a good debate about what goes on here compared to places with a long social-democratic tradition like Sweden, Norway and Finland, where, by and large, the middle class has a far higher standard of living than we do.” Despite running as an Independent, he caucuses with the Democrats. In January, asked if he would mount a third party campaign for president, Sanders replied, “I will not play that role in helping to elect some right-wing Republican as president of the United States.”

A Sanders candidacy offers American progressives the chance to build the infrastructure for future progressive electoral campaigns. Carl Davidson, co-chair of Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism (a New Left organization), puts it this way: “Bernie’s candidacy separates out the ‘politics-as-a-horse-race’ crowd from the ‘politics-as-an-organizing-opportunity’ gang.”

As Matt Taibbi observed in Rolling Stone, the fact that super-rich donors have no interest in Sanders’ politics requires the senator to tailor his political program to the interests of regular people. The Sanders campaign, as a grassroots project, will be backed by groups such as Progressive Democrats of America, which advocates what is known as the “inside-outside strategy.” This entails working with social movements on the outside and expressing the demands and concerns of those movements on the inside, in the internal battles of both Congress and the Democratic Party.

Unlike the 1988 Democratic primary, in which Jesse Jackson carried 11 states only to have his campaign organization disappear into the political ether, a Sanders campaign is set to build a movement with future electoral capacity. Sanders understands that the organization that coalesces behind him must survive the campaign itself and endure as a democratic counterweight to the power of big capital. “No president,” Sanders told MSNBC, “not Bernie Sanders, not anybody, will succeed [in taking on the oligarchs] unless there is a mass mobilization of millions of people who stand up and say, ‘Enough is enough. Koch brothers and billionaires can’t have it all.’ ”

Nowhere is the Democratic Party divide more pronounced than over the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the opaque trade deal the Obama administration is negotiating in secret with 11 other countries and for which it has requested “fast-track” authority from Congress. Progressive Democrats on Capitol Hill have balked at the plan, whereas corporate-friendly Obama allies, such as Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), are laboring mightily to pass it.

On April 17, giving a taste of the campaign to come, Sanders challenged Clinton to “make it clear that the Trans-Pacific Partnership should be rejected and that we must develop trade policies that benefit working families, not just Wall Street and multinational corporations.”

Sanders’ presence on the national stage will introduce millions of our fellow citizens to a coherently argued case for social democracy. We count on him to expand the parameters of America’s political imagination.

Here's to the Union hands getting their 'information' from the lying babes at FAUX News and the mad rantings of the NRA: take the sack off your head...your way of life is at stake. Aren't Union tradesmen taught how to be Union anymore? Are you prepared to sacrifice your wages, benefits and welfare of your family for the nonsense drug-addled Rush Limbaugh & the freakizoid Wayne LaPierre manically vomit? You think you're a patriot? Lol. Try robot on for size. You don't realize after the '7th Obama Is Coming For Your Guns' clearance sale...that he's not coming after your guns? Where are your priorities? Think you're gonna overthrow a tyrannical government with your .223 against FA 18 Hornets, the National Guard & military drones flying at 30k feet that it would use against you? That's the definition of insanity right there. But somebody, ANYBODY please tell me why craftsmen that love their Union wages, benefits, health care, retirement and working conditions blindly support GOP candidates and policies that spend each and every day attempting to strip away laws that protect and benefit us? In what part of your household budget can you tolerate a 12.2% cut in pay that goes hand in hand with your state adopting Right To Work laws? SMH

Posted by 53quicksilver53 on 2015-05-06 16:10:30

You are absolutely right Bill. Capitalism is the root cause of the middle class decline in the US including disastrous trade deals, off-shoring well paying manufacturing jobs, the most expensive least efficient healthcare in the industrialized world but there is not a politician in the country with the courage to say it.

Posted by waddell0158 on 2015-05-03 17:27:31

Bernie Sanders running for president is an excellent idea. He will split the looney left vote and ensure the election of a conservative Republican.

Posted by Bob Fritz on 2015-05-03 07:44:13

Calling Bernie Sanders a socialist is as daft as calling Obama a democrat. Bernie Sanders, like all those who swim in the fetid waters of the Democrat or Republican swamp, is moving right. Sanders is not particularly different than Warren, Clinton and Obama. From time to time they'll use leftist rhetoric but it never, ever, leads to real political change, as opposed to rebranding.

"Senator Sanders is often called a socialist in the mainstream and progressive media. While this may have been true once, it would be hard for even the most generous reader of Karl Marx to honestly say this was still the case. … All US wars involve a defense of the capitalist economy and, consequently, a belief in that economy’s superiority. Bernie Sanders actions make it clear he shares that belief."http://www.counterpunch.org/20...

Sanders has become, over time, a tool of the military industrial complex and a zionist. Zionists are racists.

" Sanders never opposes any defense spending bill. He stands behind all military contractors who bring much-needed jobs to Vermont. … Senator Sanders rarely misses a photo opportunity with Vermont National Guard troops when they are being deployed to Afghanistan or Iraq. … Sanders is the darling of the American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee and the right-wing Likud government of Israel. He has done everything within his power to keep the myth of Islamic terrorism alive. He never questions the U.S. government’s unconditional support of Israeli acts of genocide and ethnic cleansing against the Palestinians. http://www.counterpunch.org/20...

Posted by Bill_Perdue on 2015-05-02 15:21:12

I BESEECH : NATIONAL REFERENDUM ON SOCIAL SECURITY !

Posted by joe gonzalez on 2015-05-02 14:59:37

Hey, right now, Bernie IS the BEST THING COULD HAPPEN TO US ! Anything outside aBernie is lies, despair, bought-or-sold, Bulls, Bears, Wall Streets, any and all we can do without...they have brought us here, these unflinching, rich, grubbing clowns...Lords of Industry, Lords of Tech...you name it : OUT ! OUT of Government ! Do your plying on soap-boxes on street corner, billionaires - we're not about to hand over the country. Do think you'll have to : come and get ! And we're not dropping our fists, like our President !

Posted by joe gonzalez on 2015-05-02 14:58:33

exactly what I want to have happen and what this nation requires if it is to survive.